Last fall, a friend of mine said, “Every day, CNN.com and Onion.com look more alike to me.” It got me thinking, and I decided to see for myself if articles on CNN.com really did look like they were from the Onion.com. I was surprised when the titles really did seem similar, especially when CNN did fluff pieces that were assumedly published to get higher readership numbers. Therefore, I created a game “CNN or Onion.” I would give friends a list of actual article titles, and they would have to say whether the article was from CNN or the fake-news Onion. It’s actually a much harder game than I first anticipated. Of course, I could probably play the same game with FoxNews or MSNBC, but I follow CNN and wish it would run more serious news stories and not get drawn into a ratings war with the partisan news networks (i.e.- talk more about unemployment than about Sarah Palin’s bus tour).
So, here is my first round of my new favorite game. Can you guess which articles came from CNN and which came from Onion? Here’s a hint: 11 are from CNN, 9 are from Onion.
1) Zuckerberg Kills What He Eats. Should you?
2) Kirk Cameron: Dead Birds Aren't the End of the World
3) U.S. Economy Continues Campaigning for Barack Obama
4) Witches, Fortune Tellers May be Taxed Under New Romanian Labor Laws
5) John Edwards Pays $30 to Register Edwards2016.com Just in Case
6) Zombie for Garden? SkyMall Has It
7) Slurpee Summit for Obama, Boehner?
8) Unemployed Dad Channels All Energy into Creating, Running Haunted House
9) National Dating Standards Lowered
10) Ratko Mladic’s Lawyers Bargain Genocide Charges Down to 8,000 Counts of Manslaughter
11) Betty White's New Show: Punking Young Folk
12) Overheard: Your braaaiins on Zombies
13) Obama's Aunt Sends Him Article Mentioning United States
14) Detective Trying to Get Into Mind of Litterer
15) Norwegian Boy Fends off Wolves with Creed Song
16) Where Do Pets Go After They Die?
17) GoDaddy Chief Defends Elephant Kill
18) Jay Cutler Proves Naysayers Wrong by Defeating Worst Team Ever to Make Playoffs
19) 100 Percent of College Football Players Receiving Benefits of Being College Football Players
20) All You Know about Popularity is False
Here are the answers:
ReplyDelete1- CNN
2- CNN
3- Onion
4- CNN
5- Onion
6- CNN
7- CNN
8- Onion
9- Onion
10- Onion
11- CNN
12- CNN
13- Onion
14- Onion
15- CNN
16- CNN
17- CNN
18- Onion
19- Onion
20- CNN